The standard litter in use is the NATO litter or a modified version of the NATO litter. A common feature between the NATO litter and most modified versions is a two pole structure running in parallel to each other the length of an area to carry and support a patient such as nylon as illustrated in FIGS. 1 and 2. Usually, these litters are used in evacuating injured and/or wounded patients from their location of injury (or far forward facility) to a care facility for treatment.
During transport, it is vital to monitor a patient's current medical status to allow medical personnel to attempt to maintain the status quo, which preferably is sufficiently stable to allow for transport. Unfortunately, litters do not allow for the attachment of medical monitoring equipment given their structure of two poles and a place for the patient, which usually is canvas or a similar material. Instead of two individuals moving a patient, it may take at least one additional person to move along side the litter to move the equipment connected to the patient. Or the extra person may not be needed, because the equipment is put on top of the patient, which is not advisable in most medical situations given the weight of the equipment and notwithstanding the weight, the equipment may shift around on the patient and/or fall off of the patient and the litter. None of these possibilities associated with using the patient as the carrying platform are beneficial to treating the patient.
In the past few years, new devices and ways have been developed to transport the recently injured/wounded. Two examples are LSTAT, which is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,626,151, and MIRF, which is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,918,331. A drawback to both of these is that they have additional equipment and monitors that may not be necessary in each and every situation. The extra equipment adds weight and takes up space, in particular vertical space. In evacuation situations of multiple patients, the extra space will likely limit the number of patients that may be evacuated in any given transport vehicle due to the fact that the litter attachments will take up additional space unnecessarily.
Notwithstanding the usefulness of the above-described approaches, a need still exists for a lightweight attachment for litters that will allow particular equipment to be transported with the patient without requiring another individual to carry the equipment beyond the two individuals carrying the litter.